I sure as hell didn't expect it to have over 500 regular listeners and thousands of downloads. I am astounded, amazed, blessed, and humbled by the response to my show.
Now I want to make it into an eve higher-quality, weirder, wilder, trippier project than before.And the first step to that is to ditch one of its weakest points: the AI-generated music.
I've been writing this blog for five years now, and I am proud to say I have finally hit my 500th post!
I haven't had the time I would like for it lately, but for all the right reasons:
Welcome to the Deathtrap has inspired me to write a number roleplaying games from full OSR clones, to OSR-compatible games with their own Dark Fantasy setting and mechanics, to my own unique 2d6 Weird West system, to a one-page horror game.
I also have published a number of short OSR modules, and I am working towards a full-sized campaign setting.
W2tDT has attracted some friends who share my passion for D&D, it's history, and it's potential, allowing me to participate in many campaigns both short and long.
I have created 2 ttrpg short podcasts for friends and ongoing solo actual play podcast with over 500 regular listeners. Not to mention a complete 41-episode science fantasy audio drama inspired in part by the Gonzo gaming aesthetic I have come to love since starting the blog.
I have all of you to thank for carrying me through the lockdown, through the transitions involved with becoming a work-at-home dad, and through a life-altering central nervous system injury and learning to live with a disability.
I want to thank you all and hope that this blog will still be seeing the off update in another five years.
My idea started out both simple and challenging: "What if I ran a D&D game with as much surreal, plane-travelling weirdness as there was in late-90s Magic: the Gathering. I'm talking the peak insanity of the era of Tempest, Ice Age, Urza's Destiny, and Urza's Legacy, where the game was simulating a war between insane cthulhoid cyborgs and a race of precision-bred magicians with living shards of crystal and an inter-dimensional goblin horde in the middle.
I wanted low-level PCs to be roaming the planes, dealing with truly out-there wizards, and warped magical entities. As always, I subscribe to the theory that level one should feel as awesome as level 10.
The PCs come from a kingdom on a mostly-undetailed world I am basing mostly on a mix of H.P. Lovecraft's Dream-Cycle mixed with a bit of Lord Dunsany, then brought kinda' down-to-earth with the trippier bits of The Elder Scrolls' Tamriel.
At the beginning of the campaign the PCs are new arrivals at Armathan, a grand castle on a high-mountian meadow. The Mountain's great workshops are powered by a waterfall and streams that run right through its undercroft. The Castle itself was built as a part of and to defend a silver mine and an important monastery. The mine in turn connected to ancient pre-human ruins.
A while back I started talking about my great enjoyment of solo rpg podcasts, such as Tale of the Manticore, Legend of the Bones, and Stories from the First Watch.
Then I started my own: Swords Against Madness.
Since then I have joined a community of creators of these amazing solo-game inspired pods (as well as comics) and really found my tribe.
Recently, with PJ Sack of A Wasteland Story as the idea man, and Jon from Tale of the Manticore as the voice of wisdom, and me as the tech monkey, over a dozen solo roleplaying podcasters set up a The Solo Roleplayers Network with a website where you can check out a wide variety of podcasts inspired by solo TTRPGs.
There are so many amazing games being shared here (and I listen to all of them!)
Back in November I found myself with a very long series of waits on my hand on buses, in cafes, and in Hospital waiting rooms. I am trying to cut my screen time way back, so I decided instead I would grab Mythic GME and a book off my shelf and play a solo game over the course of the day.
I decided to give Dungeon World another whirl. I was not disappointed: I rather enjoyed the narrative complexity that came out of a storygame played solo (even if my players are still not interested in them.) I came up with a fantastic tale of a young princess, a squire, and an apprentice magician playing a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with dwarf terrorists in the Underdark. I gave the overall experience a 7/10, it was a good solo run, but in a lot of places it was marred by some of the flaws of the system, such as how easy it was for a bad roll or two to turn into an quagmire of bad events, and the fact that magic was often fickle and ineffectual. I made a pile of notes about how I would tweak the game in the future.
In March, I had to move house, and as I packed, hauled boxes by the dolly-full between houses, and unpacked every day for a month, I found myself binging a lot of solo semi-actual play podcasts that I was behind on, including the entire third season of the amazing The Lone Adventurer by Carl White. TLA tells a cohesive story of spies, thieves, and manapunk fighter pilots that is deeply engrossing. And one of the things he does that I really enjoy is that he periodically changes game systems to suit the kind of adventure he wants for the specific arc of the story. When he wants Bondesque action he plays D&D5e; when he tells crime stories he uses Blades in the Dark; when he is engaging in a long skyship voyage he plays Ironsworn; and airship battles are played in Warbirds. And for each he works very hard to explain the system and how it is producing the story he wants. After a few episodes in a given system, you have got a pretty good sense of how to play it and how it plays.
For one recent segment of The Lone Adventurer, Carl switched over to Chasing Adventure, a PbtA fantasy adventure game that was designed to work similarly to Dungeon World, but was intended to smooth off DW's rough edges, be mechanically a little lighter and more free-flowing, and a little less beholden to Dungeons & Dragons. Listening to Carl play got me quite intrigued, I went out and grabbed the free version immediately, and liked it enough to buy the full version a few days later.
I've been toying with a new way of writing campaign ideas down that is fun and idiosyncratic.
Start with the name of a god or faction, and describe its members. Then name how they are troubled by another group in a way that lets you flow into the next paragraph.
So, for example:
The Faction, who are a shifty group of people that terrible at coming up with names. They are insanely jealous of ...
The Appellomancers, wizards who have the power to rename things and transform the thing at a fundamental level. They are in an intellectual feud with...
...and so on. if you have a neat quirk or characteristic that didn't fit this format, add it as a footnote to your document.
I did an extended brainstorming session in this fashion, and found that it does a great job of getting you into a creative flow, and forces the creation of a more cohesive world.
My first experimental setting created in this manner I call The Far Horizon: an arctic tundra and mountain range that has recently been flooded by settlers and refugees.
Here's what I came up with on my first attempt at using this method:
I have recently had the privilege of being a playtester for Jon Cohen on One Shot in the Dark: Return to Duervar and I really had a blast doing it.
By way of full disclosure, Jon and I have been collaborating along with a few others to create a network for solo semi-actual-play podcasts, and he has been a voice actor on my podcast, so it is fair to say I consider him a friend and colleague. And I am a massive Tale of the Manticore fan. Portion your salt appropriately.
One Shot in the Dark is an ultra-light solo RPG scenario that allows you to have a pretty satisfying solo dungeon crawl in 15-50 minutes using a deck of cards and some D&D dice. You can read my review of One Shot in the Dark here. Suffice it to say that it is a great way to scratch the dungeon crawling itch, makes very few demands on your time, and costs as much as a large coffee. It is good fun, and I have played it a few times over the years.
